Last week, Microsoft hosted its annual Inspire conference, where they unveiled exciting new investments and updates across business applications.
As expected, AI took centre stage at this year’s conference. In case you missed the event, we’ve got you covered with our top 6 highlights below.
1. Bing Chat Enterprise
Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced the new Bing, incorporating generative AI capabilities. Like ChatGPT, you can ask questions, and Bing will respond like a chatbot, fetching answers from the web. But, there were concerns about using this for work as it could potentially put sensitive business data at risk.
To address these concerns, Microsoft has now announced Bing Chat Enterprise, an AI-powered chat for work with commercial data protection. For instance, you can use Bing Chat to create messaging for a new product launch without worrying about leaking sensitive data outside your organisation. Chat data is not saved or used to train the AI, and Microsoft ensures they cannot view your data.
2. Azure Migrate and Modernise
The Azure Migration and Modernisation Program (AMMP) is now Azure Migrate and Modernise. This updated version offers new investments and enhancements to accelerate Azure cloud adoption.
This includes extensive guidance with assessments and proof of concepts, deployment assistance, automated tools for discovery, deeper partner incentives and more to support your end-to-end cloud journey.
3. Dynamics 365 marketing is now Customer Insights
Dynamics 365 Marketing will be combined with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and renamed as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys from September 1. The two applications are merged to create a unified customer profile and orchestrate personalised journeys with predictive insights.
This new module focuses exclusively on real-time marketing and includes new features that help you create customer journeys and easily style your emails and forms using natural language.
4. Viva Sales is now Microsoft Sales Copilot
Last year, Microsoft announced Viva Sales, an application that takes CRM to where sellers work, whether that’s Outlook or Teams. This was intended to reduce manual data entry, reduce switching between apps and help them collaborate better.
Now, Viva Sales is being rebranded as Microsoft Sales Copilot. This includes many new AI-powered insights for sales teams, such as automated lead and opportunity summaries, contextual emails based on CRM data, and real-time answers to customer queries during Teams meetings.
5. Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing
Microsoft 365 Copilot, announced a few months ago, provides built-in generative AI capabilities across Microsoft business apps. Think of it like ChatGPT but in the context of your work for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and other Microsoft apps.
Now we have clarity on its pricing. Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $30 per user per month for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers.
6. Power Automate process mining
Process mining is now enhanced with advanced AI features. This helps you continuously improve your processes, get AI-powered root cause analysis, uncover inefficiencies and identify opportunities for automation with Power Automate and low-code. This will become generally available on August 1, 2023. Read more about it here – Microsoft launches Power Automate Process Mining and next-generation AI.
2023 Release Wave 2 for Dynamics 365
In addition to these announcements, Microsoft also released its 2023 Release Wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. We’ve digested this information and provided our summary in this separate post.
These new announcements underline Microsoft’s focus on AI in improving your productivity. You can read more about Inspire in this article. As always, if you need help exploring any of these new features, feel free to contact us.
